Dante's Peak

Distributed by
Pioneer LDCE

Cat.no: PLFEB 36701

Cert: 12

Running time: 104 minutes

Sides: 2 (CLV)

Year: 1997

Pressing: 1998

Chapters: Yes

Sound: Dolby Surround

Widescreen: 2.35:1

Price: £24.99

Extras : Trailers for Daylight, Dragonheart, The Frighteners

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Director:

Roger Donaldson

Cast:

Pierce Brosnan
Linda Hamilton
Charles Hallahan

Underpinned by a wonderfully insistent, doom-laden John Frizzell orchestral score, which in its quieter, solo piano moments acts as a sort of subliminal ticking countdown, this is on one level a dumb, big budget Hollywood disaster movie (why does the crashing helicopter fall directly in the ash-strewn path of Brosnan's car?) and on another an extraordinary catalogue of digital effects sequences (courtesy of top CGI FX house Digital Domain, bless 'em) detailing the various observable features of an erupting volcano. The latter are thoroughly researched and include tsunamis, pyroclastic clouds, mudslides, ash fall and lava flow - not to mention episodes involving lakes of acid, collapsing bridges and ultimately burial alive in a cave.

Plot (such as it is) concerns eponymous small Pacific NorthWestern town which, despite being built on the slopes of a volcano not unlike Pompeii has just been named the second nicest place to live in the United States by Money magazine. (And the first? "Some place in the MidWest," says a cheerful hotelier, "but who cares?").

Its mayor is single mother of two Linda Hamilton. Enter volcanologist Pierce Brosnan (potential girlfriend wiped out by falling chunk of molten rock to the head fleeing an erupting volcano in the prologue) to discover various local danger signs, followed by his superior Charles Hallaran to pronounce the town safe, followed by further more pressing danger signs (like brown tap water towards the end of disc side one just as Brosnan and Hamilton look finally set for a bit of nookie), a perfectly chosen side break and the eruption proper starting less than a minute into the start of side two.

Donaldson may not be a master director - imagine this in the hands of Hitchcock (The Birds), Spielberg (Jaws) or even (if you want the weirdo version) Lynch (Eruption at Twin Peaks) - but the whole thing makes sense in a pedestrian sort of way and as a visual spectacular, it's peerless (which is not something that could be said for the movie's main competitor, the dismally repetitive Volcano).

Anyway, having rather enjoyed this in the cinema and trudged through the abysmally cropped and near unwatchable PAL VHS rental version, this disc is a joy. Widescreening is essential to viewing pleasure here, whether we're talking about cars driving around, the beautiful static lakeside vista that opens chapter 7, the camera move over the crater ridge in chapter 12 (complete with superb Dolby Surround chopper sound effects that vary from different points of view within the scene), the pyroclastic cloud with sky either side in chapter 33 before it subsequently covers the skyscape, forked lightning across clouded skies in chapter 25, the collapse of a dam or numerous other scenes.

One curious observation, though. In the scene where the children in the car crossing the molten material spot their dog on a distant, solid rock outcrop (chapter 31), the first shot of the dog has the animal so small you can barely see it in the 2.35:1 version, whereas it's quite visible on the fullscreen VHS. Not, you understand, that I'm complaining - this film has so many scenes that are unwatchable fullscreened that the widescreen is the only version that makes sense (outside of a print projected in the cinema).

Chapter stops are more than adequate, with several starting at the perfect moment (usually the opening of a scene where a car drives around the town) - almost as if the screenplay had been written and the film constructed with laserdisc chapter stops in mind. There are some superb sound effects to complement the visuals, notably for falling rock chunks and creaks and cracks inside the finale's mine shaft where Brosnan is entombed inside a car that is slowly being crushed flatter and flatter.

All in all, then, this is an adequate (rather than great) film that feels that its incarnation on laserdisc was properly thought through, although its visuals are physically so expansive that there's really no way for them to be quite as impressive as in the cinema.

One small carp: it would have been nice to have three similar genre trailers, e.g. Daylight (which is here), Jaws and Twister on this disc. Alas, we only get one out of three. Otherwise, though, Pioneer's PAL Dante's Peak is a terrific little disc.

Film: 3/5
Picture: 4/5
Sound: 5/5

Review copyright © Jeremy Clarke, 1998.